Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first major reform plans a decade ago were also his boldest, envisaging a transition to a Western-style free market economy driven by services and consumption by 2020.

The 60-point agenda was meant to fix an obsolete growth model better suited to less developed countries - however, most of those reforms have gone nowhere leaving the economy largely reliant on older policies that have only added to China’s massive debt pile and industrial overcapacity.

The failure to restructure the world’s second-largest economy has raised critical questions about what comes next for China.

While many analysts see a slow drift towards Japan-style stagnation as the most likely outcome, there is also the prospect of a more severe crunch.

  • randon31415@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’ve been hearing about ghost towns and the coming Chinese economic collapse now for ten years. It will probably happen after Trump is behind bars at this rate.

    • MinekPo1 [She/Her]@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      FYI:

      Many developments initially criticized as ghost cities did materialize into economically vibrant areas when given enough time to develop, such as Pudong, Zhujiang New Town, Zhengdong New Area, Tianducheng and malls such as the Golden Resources Mall and South China Mall. While many developments failed to live up to initial lofty promises, most of them eventually became occupied when given enough time.

      Reporting in 2018, Shepard noted that “Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities”.

      - Wikipedia (Under-occupied developments in China)

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    BEIJING, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Chinese President Xi Jinping’s first major reform plans a decade ago were also his boldest, envisaging a transition to a Western-style free market economy driven by services and consumption by 2020.

    The 60-point agenda was meant to fix an obsolete growth model better suited to less developed countries - however, most of those reforms have gone nowhere leaving the economy largely reliant on older policies that have only added to China’s massive debt pile and industrial overcapacity.

    That has kept consumer demand weaker as a portion of GDP than in most other countries and concentrated job creation in the construction and industrial sectors, careers increasingly spurned by young university graduates.

    Logan Wright, a partner at Rhodium Group, says Beijing has to decide which portion of that debt to rescue, as the amount is too large to provide full guarantees of repayment, which the market currently regards as implicit.

    Alicia Garcia Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, expects there would be plenty of buyers if Beijing consolidates debt given limited investment alternatives.

    Those plans have barely been mentioned since 2015 when a capital outflows scare sent stocks and the yuan tumbling and engendered an official aversion to potentially disruptive reforms, analysts say.


    The original article contains 983 words, the summary contains 208 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

      • MinekPo1 [She/Her]@lemmygrad.ml
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        1 year ago

        President can refer to an unelected leader. However the position of the president in China is purely ceremonial, so it could be argued that the more important title Xi holds is General Secretary, which is a title the PRC “inherited” from the Soviet Union which I feel like is closer to the position of a prime minister in European countries (ie the leader of the ruling party), though I admit my understanding of Chinese politics is quite shallow.

  • iain@feddit.nl
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    1 year ago

    China’s economic miracle? I don’t believe in miracles. I don’t believe articles that talk about miracles.

    China is both a dangerous enemy and they’re about to collapse. The enemy is both strong and weak. Umberto Eco called that one of the characteristics of fascism.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Why does this have so many downvotes? We do sound like fascists talking about China like they are somehow both on the verge of collapse and our greatest threat. Yet they produce all our shit.

      • iain@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        I am not defending China, just pointing out a crappy argument.

        We’re becoming more and more fascist in the west, with politicians like Trump, DeSantis and so on. This article from Reuters is part of this shift to the right and that’s why I’m pointing it out. Fascism is a bigger risk to our way of life than China is.

    • ChicoSuave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Umberto Eco’s list of fascist characteristics are applied to how they view themselves, not how others view them. Strength is dependent on many things to help maintain that strength and weakness is antithetical - a thing cannot be weak and strong by the same metric. You calling them both weak and strong is fascist, it isn’t true because you’re using different metrics to measure different parts of China.

      • iain@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        A thing can’t be weak and strong by the same metric, indeed. That’s why this article has to call China’s economical strength a miracle, as well as so weak it is about to collapse, otherwise the contradiction would be too obvious.

  • GodlessCommie@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    How many decades have passed where we’ve been told they are on the verge of collapse? It’s always right around the corner. This is Schrodinger’s China, simultaneously weak and strong.

    This is nothing more than red scare propaganda to diminish the achievements of a society outpacing the US

    • steltek@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Is this your first economic crisis or something? Do some search-replace work and this article looks like a copy-paste dupe from 2008. Their capitalist society is about to get a market correction as the bubble bursts. That’s all.

      The real propaganda at work here is that anything negative about China is automatically “red scare” and not just boring old “business news”.

    • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Are you really saying that you don’t think that the Chinese people have culture? Because that seems like a very strange thing to add to the economic discussion and is a pretty silly belief to hold.

      • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I would go as far to say that china doesn’t have a unified culture as they like to present. I don’t think that’s what op was probably talking about, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

        China likes to present itself as a body that’s been unified for thousands of years under Han guidance. In reality the Han have only historically controlled eastern and central china.

        Since the revolution the Han have practiced a campaign of cultural imperialism against minority groups left in the country. Replacing and co-opting history and people with more han expansionism.

        • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Sure, perhaps I was reading too far into the “all of” culture part, meaning that they have none. I didn’t get the feeling that it was stated with nuance, but I could be wrong, and I see the point you’re making.

          People say this about the US, too. Either that there is no culture or that it is merely McDonald’s, Marvel movies, and pop music etc.

          When in reality it is a huge country with many regional characteristics, and it’s similarly silly to think people don’t create an enriched culture there. And that was the vibe I got from op, anyway.

          • TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Yeah not what I was getting from op either.

            I think the biggest difference between the culture of China and the US is how we think about cultural domination. America tends create culture via a competition and fusion of ideologies. This can be reflected in new styles of arts from an amalgamation of cultures. It can also be a conglomeration of some of our worst tendencies, really it’s kinda a mixed bag.

            China’s culture is dictated by the Han, and enforced by the state apparatus. There is no blending of cultures, china is for the Han. Everyone else will be broken up and replaced by state sponsored han migrants.

        • xep@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The CCP certainly tried to remove as much of it as they could in the Cultural Revolution, burning books, destroying cultural relics, and prosecuting intellectuals.

      • kaitco@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Can’t have millions living in poverty if they’ve all died from the famine!

        taps head

        • MinekPo1 [She/Her]@lemmygrad.ml
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          1 year ago

          According to the World Bank, the PRC lifted 800 million people out of poverty, which is eight times higher than the number of civilian deaths the “Black Book of Communism” assigns to all Communist counties, which itself is widely considered overblown, including by several coauthors.